


The one where Jehan owns a bookshop and is everyone's favorite

by mercuryhatter



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, wherein Jehan smashes capitalism through fantastic corner bookshops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So it came as no surprise when Jehan, upon graduating with a degree in library science and another in Romantic literature with assorted minors in things like medieval studies and astrophysics, promptly opened a bookshop on a street corner and informed all his friends that they no longer had any excuse to frequent Barnes and Noble ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The one where Jehan owns a bookshop and is everyone's favorite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wutherings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wutherings/gifts).



> This was written for Hester (wutheringss) ages ago and I just remembered to put it up, whoops!

Jehan had Things against corporate bookstores, Things on which he could expound almost more verbosely than Enjolras could talk about the idiocies of anarchocapitalism.

“They’re not only cold and impersonal, they’re also blood-sucking money monsters that restrict the freedom of independent writers and aid in author censorship,” he’d tell anyone who got him started on the topic. “Besides, they all have a Starbucks in them, and everyone knows that Starbucks is evil.” 

So it came as no surprise when Jehan, upon graduating with a degree in library science and another in Romantic literature with assorted minors in things like medieval studies and astrophysics, promptly opened a bookshop on a street corner and informed all his friends that they no longer had any excuse to frequent Barnes and Noble ever again.

The bookshop was in a building that Jehan had been pining over since his third year of university. It had once been a house, but since had been a variety of different shops and restaurants before Jehan claimed it. Under his care, it quickly changed from derelict to an almost fairy-tale level of adorable. He repainted the two stories with lavender for the trim and bright sky blue for the rest, with Alice In Wonderland murals across the lower half that he commissioned from Grantaire and Feuilly (and watching those two attempt to work together had been a spectacle all by itself). Combeferre had added quotes painted in his neat, curling hand that twined around the talking flowers and flew among the cartoon clouds. The front porch was all Jehan’s work, with each post painted a different, almost offensively bright color. They were mostly obscured, however, with an equally colorful riot of flowers-- ivy, roses, geraniums, violets, snapdragons, almost anything would grow under Jehan’s gentle hand. A key was painted in metallic gold over the door, leading the front porch to be referred to affectionately as le Jardin Secret (when people weren’t complaining about it being too much of a jungle to even find the front door). 

Inside, the shop smelled like old books and new ink and coffee. Ceiling fans turned lazily on the painted ceilings and during the warm months the windows were always thrown open, mismatched curtains drawn back and pinned directly to the wall with thumbtacks. It was a little difficult to maneuver; the rooms were already small and Jehan had crammed them with bookshelves and armchairs and side tables of wildly different ages and styles, given that they were all from thrift stores or rescued from the side of the road. The front room was dedicated to local authors and artists, tables piled high with flyers and ‘zines and newspapers. Occasionally a more popular author would make it in, if Jehan particularly liked the book, but on the whole he refused to carry those no matter how many times he was called an insufferable hipster for it. There was a small bathroom that was really just a toilet and sink amid piles of books, give that the shower had long ago been appropriated for further storage to the point where Combeferre eventually just took out the showerhead completely to avoid the tendency it had to turn on whenever Bossuet was around, and a kitchen that was mostly book-free if only because every Wednesday it was open for anyone to cook in. Instead of excessive amounts of books the kitchen had a windowbox full of potted herbs, as well as several mason jars that had been appropriated for plant use, and a few larger pots on the floor for tea trees and aloe plants. A skylight made the kitchen reminiscent of a greenhouse, albeit one that smelled like cupcakes more than anything else. 

The back room was dimly lit and scrupulously clean; it was reserved for older books and smelled overwhelmingly of dust and glue. There were some fairly valuable first editions, but just as many were relatively worthless, rescued from antique stores and library sales and restored under Feuilly’s practiced fingers, bookbinding being one of his sundry and varied skills. 

The last room was fondly called the production room or simply the press. It was off to one side and the only room that was closed to the average customer, although many of the regulars made use of it often. It was home to several wide worktables, cabinets of supplies, and a formidable, slightly frightening machine that copied and faxed and printed and probably about six other functions that no one had been able to discover yet. Jehan ran a monthly erotic poetry journal called Farouche from there, and Enjolras used it for writing and printing countless pamphlets and ‘zine articles. From there, it evolved into a sort of donation-based Xerox for anyone who needed it, with Grantaire generally willing to illustrate for anyone who asked so long as they weren’t “too much of a pretentious fuck.” 

Ostensibly, Jehan lived in the apartment on the second floor of the shop, but in all actuality, that space was practically abandoned, and as often as not he could be found sleeping in an armchair or across a couch downstairs with his face firmly planted in his notebook, ink leaving mirror images of poems across his cheek. 

The bookshop eventually came to function as a sort of home base for Jehan’s group of friends, which suited him very nicely. Bossuet always dragged Musichetta and Joly in for celebration whenever they got home from their respective missions with Doctors Without Borders (these usually ended with all three asleep on the same couch, with a blanket tossed over them and a plate of macarons waiting for them on the side table). Enjolras used it as a point of distribution for his political operations, but could also be found hiding in the production room whenever he and Grantaire were fighting, which would seem to kind of defeat the purpose, given that Grantaire could always be found sulking on the kitchen counter with a copy of Livy’s histories. Enjolras didn’t speak at all during these times, and Grantaire just shouted irritably in Latin at anything that stood still long enough, but they always made up, usually with Grantaire still on the kitchen counter, his legs looped around Enjolras’ waist as they kissed each other until Bahorel chased them out to “go find a more horizontal surface to canoodle on.” Jehan had written sonnets about their kisses, which always seemed more fierce than could possibly be comfortable, and more suited for a battlefield than for his kitchen, but that was just how the two of them worked. The only thing he minded about that was his continual rescues of increasingly battered Livy texts.

Bahorel was in the kitchen baking almost every week, his loud laugh echoing through the entire shop along with the smell of whatever incredible culinary concoction he’d come up with this time. Usually Courfeyrac would be in there too, hanging over Bahorel’s shoulders and distracting him with kisses so he could steal spoonfuls of batter and frosting until Bahorel finally would give in and chase him out with a dishtowel so that anything could actually get baked.

The same dishtowel was often put to use when Eponine and Cosette came in, fresh from practice, roller skates loud across the wood floors, their laughs intermingling with Jehan’s high-pitched shouts that I don’t care how many points you scored today, this is a bookshop, not a derby track! followed by half-serious apologies as the pair trooped out onto the front porch again to leave their skates at the door. Once they had sweet-talked (and often kissed) their way back into Jehan’s good graces, he’d often join them in sock-slide races between the shelves, but not before he’d tied the laces of their skates together in an intricate sailing knot Bahorel showed him.

Combeferre and Feuilly came every Saturday for an unofficial study group that really only consisted of the two of them (other people tended to be intimidated at the rate that the pair of them consumed and retained knowledge and so never lasted long), and when Cosette started dating Courfeyrac’s shy flatmate Marius (after he’d been to at least ten of her bouts without saying a word to her), she brought him to the bookshop for several of their first few dates. She stopped, however, after the surprise serenades from Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Grantaire, and Musichetta grew to be too much for Marius’s nerves. Besides, Musichetta was the only really good singer out of the group, the others were just there for extra noise.

Jehan kissed everyone and did more than kiss with at least 89% of their group-- Cosette didn’t stop raving about his tongue for a week after their first time-- and his favorite thing was the fact that if he was curled in the armchair by the front door, scribbling verses into his notebook or highlighting his favorite copy of Keats, there was a nine out of ten chance that the next person in the door would lean down to make out with him. If they weren’t busy, they were generally in danger of being dragged into the armchair with Jehan to finally be released a quarter of an hour later with haikus on their hands and villanelles trailing over their arms and more often than not, a violet in their hair. Musichetta’s twins loved him; they practically grew up in the bookstore with Bahorel and Courfeyrac feeding them sweets and Grantaire leading them in mass fingerpainting sessions and Jehan teaching them how to do a fishtail braid while singing children’s rhymes.

And when the kitchen sometimes became an urgent care center when Bahorel and Enjolras and Grantaire came home from a messy protest, or the production room became a worried place of vigil while they waited for Musichetta to get out of the hospital, Jehan would offer his hands and shoulders to any who needed them, and close the shop up for the day no matter what time it was to give everyone some peace.

The shop went through many names, although more often than not the chalkboard sign on the sidewalk out front would be sabotaged by Grantaire or Eponine to sport the latest inside joke or a dirty innuendo, but mostly it was just called Jehan’s, and overall, Jehan himself considered it to be a worthy strike against the evils of capitalism and overpriced coffee drinks.


End file.
